Nothing to do about that now.
“My name is Dante. I was a Mystic First Class, but I suspect I’ve been fired.” He kept a sober expression; smiling might not go over so well. “Sorry to interrupt. I’d just like to surrender.”
***
Once they got over their shock, the Mystics proved themselves efficient. They brought him to one of the shelters and left him with a hard-eyed blonde soldier. She kept her automatic rifle aimed at him.
After his first few tries at conversation were rebuffed, Dante sat and waited. After what seemed like hours, the door opened, and Captain Ronasuli stepped in.
“Wait outside,” she told the soldier. “And shut the door behind you.”
When they were alone, Julia loosened her gun in its holster, then took the chair across from Dante. She glared, her hand never leaving her gun. She had every reason to want him dead. He had innocent blood on his hands, and all of it had been from her crew. He expected she would kill him. He deserved it, despite the dragon that had controlled him. Dante was the vessel that carried the death and destruction to the Fleet.
“So…you surrendered,” she said.
“Yes, captain,” he answered.
“Why?”
“Because I want to go home. I did terrible things and, in some ways, I was complicit in that. Still, I did them while under the influence of a dragon.” He felt his heart skip faster as she narrowed her eyes at him. He’d never had what they called an honest face. “I want to make things right if I can.”
“You want to make things right.” She cocked her head to the side. “How do you plan on doing that? Do you know how to bring back the dead?”
“No, captain. I didn’t have a choice in that. I couldn’t have stopped it, but I still feel the weight of what was done by my hand, even if I wasn’t in control.” He held his hands up, and she gripped her pistol.
He dropped his hands again.
“I should shoot you and leave you here for the buzzards,” she said.
Her voice was so cold he believed she’d do it if he gave her a reason. He tried not to. He held as still as a rock and looked meek as she glared at him. Finally, she stood.
“You’ll stay here until I say otherwise,” she said.
“Whatever you say.”
She gave him one last hard look, then was gone, slamming the door behind her.
***
Time passed. It might have been an hour, maybe less, before the door opened again. Dante tensed. Coraolis stepped inside, a bundle tucked under his arm and a bucket of water. He was unarmed, and there was none of the hostility he’d seen in the captain.
That didn’t mean he was able to relax.
“Here.” Coraolis tossed the bundle to him.
Dante caught it on reflex, even though he’d resolved not to move. It was a uniform shirt and pants, clean and recently pressed. He smelled the starch. They were wrapped around a bar of soap and a square cloth. He leaned forward to peer into the bucket. It was filled with steaming water.
“I thought you’d like to clean up.” Coraolis turned the empty chair around and sat in it with his back to Dante. “I’m not supposed to leave you alone with all that,” he said over his shoulder, “but I’ll afford you a little privacy.”
Dante watched the back of the Mystic’s head. He didn’t quite trust this. Something about it nagged at him, but the thought of being clean was too good to resist.
“You’re being awfully kind to a mass murderer,” he said at last.
“Am I?” Coraolis shrugged. “I hear a dragon made you do it.”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Dante breathed in the clean clothes scent again. He decided to clean up and change. If he could trust anyone here, it was another Mystic. “The devil made me do it is a pretty old excuse.”
“It is.”
Dante pulled off his bloody clothes and started scrubbing. It wasn’t a hot shower, but it was still a blessed relief to get the filth off him.
“The thing is,” Coraolis said, “there are reports of you looking like a lizard man when all that went down, yet now, you look as human as I do.”
Dante froze. He put his hand to his face and felt nothing but smooth skin. There were no strange bumps, no scales. He let out a shaky breath and squeezed his cheek. It felt soft, smooth, and normal, with even a hint of stubble along his jaw. He had his face back.
“Well…” He licked his lips, struggling for something to say. Thank you would be ridiculous. Coraolis hadn’t fixed his face. He’d just told Dante about it. “That’s a relief.”
“I can imagine. While you’re cleaning up, why don’t you tell me about it? How’d you get rid of the dragon and close the rift?”
Dante ran his hand over his face, grinning, before cleaning himself in earnest. He felt clearer, even if that was an illusion brought on by the ‘bath.’ He had a place to start.
Maybe even start over.
He paused while rinsing off. He was ready to talk after the simple kindness, especially after Ronasuli’s threats. He was dirty, alone, and afraid, and Coraolis came along with an offer to clean himself plus a new set of clothes.
He knew what this was. Coraolis was the good cop, Ronasuli the bad. They wanted him scared into honesty if his surrender wasn’t sincere. That was smart and only fair. He couldn’t expect trust at this point.
“I got free because I paid attention. I picked up some tricks and managed to trap its mind. It broke out when I went into the rift, but then I was free.” He grimaced, thinking of what he’d faced there. “Eventually, I figured my death would close the rift, so I killed myself. For some reason, I’m still here.”
“And now you’ve surrendered.”
“As I told the captain, I’d like to go home. I’d like to make sense out of what that thing did to me and take some good from it.” Dante pulled on the uniform. The pants were too short and the shirt too large, but at least he was warm and comfortable once more. “I think I could do some good. I know it won’t make up for what I’ve done, Coraolis. But I have to do something.”
Dante went back to his chair, and Coraolis got up to collect the supplies. Dante stayed out of his way, keeping his peace. Coraolis didn’t say anything either, however his expression before he left seemed encouraging. It was kind.
***
“Well?” Julia asked when Coraolis came outside. She’d been pacing while Andrus watched. He always had a pinched expression when he looked at her, like he suspected her of eating his last cookie. She didn’t like it, especially when she was trying to sort out her thoughts about Dante.
She hadn’t liked threatening him. He’d looked genuinely scared, and she’d had to leave before she ruined the act by apologizing.
Her gut said Dante had spoken the truth, that a dragon had manipulated him. The change in his appearance went a long way to support that. He seemed subdued—nothing like the cocky Mike who’d joined the Side Liner all those months ago.
“I believe him,” Coraolis said.
“Just like that?” Andrus asked. “If the dragon still has him, if it ever had him, how can we trust—?”
“We can’t think like that,” Julia cut him off. “Excuse me, Mike, but you two put him in my hands. Cor believes his story, and I think I do too. If it’s true, that makes him a victim.”
“That’s a very generous thing to say,” Cor said. His approval shouldn’t mean this much to her, but she allowed herself some warm and fuzzy feelings over it.
“I still want him locked up until we leave the planet. A lot of people were hurt out here, and they might want to take it out on him.”
“Agreed,” Andrus said.
Cor shot the older Mystic a look that bordered on angry. Andrus pretended not to see, and Julia decided to follow that example. Whatever was going on between them was Mystic business, not hers—as long as it didn’t cause trouble on her ship.
***
The rest of Dante’s stay on Cavey was uneventful. He might say boring, but that discounted
the Earth Fleet personnel hanging out around his prison, hoping for a chance to get even. Captain Ronasuli had decided to believe him, and the other Mystics agreed. Beyond that, it was hard to say who believed what, or just how safe he was.
He spent his days in meditation but stayed in his body. They brought him meals and took him to the latrine when he asked. He had a rotating shift of four guards. After a few overheard conversations, he understood that they were all close friends and called themselves the Dragon Slayers.
That didn’t bode well for him, yet they weren’t overtly hostile. He had to accept that.
After a couple days, they escorted him onto a shuttle with only the Dragon Slayers for company. They talked and joked among themselves as if he wasn’t there; that, of all things, convinced him they didn’t hold a grudge.
The voyage to Earth had its own ups and downs. He had a cabin to himself and was free to move about the boat, but he kept to himself. Not everyone on Side Liner looked at him like a rabid dog, but that wasn’t the important part. He was a walking, talking reminder of what they’d lost. It seemed kinder to stay out of their way.
His only regular visitors were Coraolis and Andrus. They came separately and for different reasons. Coraolis offered simple companionship, someone to talk to. He behaved as if Dante had never attacked him, even though he knew by now Dante had been in the pilot’s chair when they met in the Astral Plane. It was simply forgiven if not forgotten.
One day, Coraolis asked him about Operation Swordfall. Coraolis confided he was being transferred to that operation when they arrived on Earth, and he didn’t want to go in blind. Dante told him what he knew, which wasn’t much, but offered to help if he could. Coraolis had been a friend to him. He felt compelled to return the favor.
Andrus was another matter. He wanted to know all about Dante’s experiences. He came by every day with more questions. Dante got the sense that not all of them came from Andrus but from the Secret Council he served. Andrus confirmed Dante’s suspicions when he handed him a datapad with a formal promotion contract on the screen. He was to join the Secret Council, effective immediately.
He thanked Andrus and asked to be alone. When Andrus tried to ply him with another set of questions, Dante pushed back for the first and last time. They were technically equals now, and he could do that, but he mostly wanted time to digest.
Captain Ronasuli visited him once, just before they reached the mothership. She told him she forgave what he’d done because she knew it wasn’t him. And she apologized, because even though she forgave him, it was too difficult to be around him. The wounds were too raw.
He understood. Her forgiveness was a gift to herself as much as to him, and he humbly accepted. He’d put her through hell. If she forgave him, perhaps there was hope for him after all.
CHAPTER TEN
Their return to Earth was uneventful, and the debriefing mostly painless. Side Liner was docked for repairs. The crew worked long hours to get it back up to code. They were short-handed, but there were few complaints about that. No one felt ready to welcome new crew members. The empty places on the roster were still too raw.
She had the personnel request forms. All she had to do was fill out the codes and send them in. Yet every time she opened the files, she closed them again without making any changes. As the weeks passed, she knew she’d have to do it soon. Side Liner couldn’t ship out with less than a full crew. She had to get over this paralysis and move on.
She was in her ready room when her datapad pinged with a priority message. She opened it, then jumped through a dozen hoops to prove her identity and security clearance. If the message hadn’t come directly from Admiral Barclay, she would have thought it was a scam. As it was, her stomach twisted in tighter knots as she passed each level of encryption.
The message was brief. Someone had been paying too much attention to her. They knew about her inaction, the failure to fill out her roster. The crease between her eyebrows deepened as she read the message again, then a third time. The words were simple enough to understand on their own, but when put together, it sounded like nonsense.
“What in the world is Operation Swordfall?” she asked out loud.
***
Julia passed through the security checkpoint and stepped onto a path at the edge of the forest. Autumn painted the leaves in vibrant shades of red and orange. When the wind shook the treetops, it looked like the sky was on fire.
This wasn’t what she’d expected when she learned the Academy was in the middle of a city. It felt like being on another world. The muffled traffic outside the walls completed the illusion of isolation.
“Julia.” Coraolis jogged up. “I almost didn’t recognize you out of uniform.”
“Then you’d make a terrible spy,” she teased. “It’s good to see you, Cor.”
He opened his arms, and she stepped into the hug. Her heart started hammering away. She let go before he noticed and hoped he put the flush in her cheeks down to the breeze. Had she missed him or what he represented?
“You too,” he said, clearing his throat as he stepped back. “I’m glad you could make it. Finally.”
“No kidding.” She grinned. “I’m officially discharged. My time is my own. For now, that is.”
He nodded toward one of the paths into the trees. “You don’t mind a little walk, do you?”
She shook her head before realizing he wasn’t looking at her but at the ground, lost in thought. He started walking at an easy pace.
They strolled in companionable silence. After a moment, she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. They’d kept in touch through video calls and messaging. There was no real need to catch up, and she never cared much for small talk. It was enough to quietly enjoy each other’s company if only for a short while.
She’d missed him since the return to Earth. Some of her relationships were temporary. People came and went, and that was just the way it was, her crew being the only constant. Coraolis was different. He’d become more than crew; he was a trusted friend. She couldn’t remember her last close friend.
They turned off the main path into a small clearing with an abstract sculpture at the center. The leaves rustled overhead. They were alone. Cor led her to the only bench, and they sat with shoulders touching.
“So, you said you wanted to talk?” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
The wind had slapped some color into his face. He raised his eyebrows and smiled, but she thought he was a little tense. That was her fault; telling someone I need to talk to you had set a bad tone. It was best to just spit it out.
“I’m becoming a Mystic,” she said.
His smile faltered before it relaxed. He settled back and gazed at the sculpture.
“I know,” he said.
“You know? How can you know? I only told my parents so far.”
“I’m the head of Operation Swordfall. They put me in charge after we got back from Cavey,” Coraolis said. “It isn’t public knowledge yet, but now that you’ve signed the paperwork, I think we’re fine.”
“Sounds like a flimsy excuse. I suppose you share classified info with all the women you know.” She rolled her eyes.
“No, no. There aren’t any others,” he said. “You are the only one to get all my secrets, such as they are.”
“You need to get some more exotic secrets, then.” She spoke lightly and tried not to hang onto the phrase ‘there aren’t any others.’ They were joking around. No need to overanalyze.
“I really do. I was thinking of becoming an intergalactic spy.”
“We already established you’d be terrible at it,” she said.
He laughed. “I guess I would. I’m curious, though. Why are you doing this?”
“Do you mean, why did I leave Earth Fleet? Or why do I want to be a Mystic?”
“Both, I guess. It’s a big change.”
“It is. The E.F. was my whole life, but it was different after Cavey. I faced threats that…no offense, but I didn’
t completely believe in what you did before. I knew Mystics did something, but…“
“No offense taken.” He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “It’s perfectly normal to not believe in what we do or what we are. I don’t hold it against you.”
Her face warmed, but she couldn’t do anything about that. She decided to keep talking while she figured herself out. “There’s an enemy out there that only a handful of people can face. If I can help, it’s my duty to do so. Operation Swordfall will let me do that.”
“Personally, I hope there won’t be any more aggression on their part, but I’ll be glad to have you on our side,” he said.
“I was always on your side.” She nudged him. “What’s it like, being a Mystic?”
“The school is the hardest part, to be honest. It takes a lot of discipline and hard work, but you won’t have anything to worry about. We have a community where we all know each other, at least by sight. We learn from each other and support each other. I’d say we’re halfway between an academic society and a Buddhist monastery, but with more TV.”
She laughed softly. “That sounds kind of nice. What about the rest of it?”
“The powers? Well, that’s different. You’ll see things no one else can, and travel in a world no one else can reach. It’s beautiful as well as terrifying.” He hesitated a moment, contemplating his next words, then pressed on. “I worry that it’s dangerous for someone who wasn’t born to it, and that’s not including the brain surgery.”
“I know the risks.” She’d weighed that carefully. No matter how medicine advanced, it would never be completely safe to cut into someone’s brain and stick in cybernetic parts. That was even truer when the cybernetics let a person mimic a Mystic’s powers.
“It’s your decision, no question. As the head of Operation Swordfall, I know it’s as safe as it can be. But you’re important to me, and I’m going to worry until it’s over. That’s just how it is,” he said.
“Is that how it is?” she asked softly. She looked up at him. He was focusing hard on the sculpture, avoiding her gaze. A question came to the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t want to ruin the moment. “Then I guess I have to take it.”
Dragon Invasion Page 9
